Automotive vehicles are increasingly being equipped with collision avoidance and warning systems for predicting potential collisions with external objects, such as another vehicle or a pedestrian. Upon detecting a potential collision, such systems are capable of initiating an action to avoid the collision, minimize impact with the object, and/or provide a warning to the vehicle operator. Adaptive cruise control systems have been proposed to track a leading vehicle and automatically control the speed of the following vehicle. The ability to accurately predict an upcoming collision also enables a vehicle controller to control and deploy safety-related devices on the host vehicle. For example, upon predicting an anticipated collision or near collision with an object, the vehicle seat belt pretensioner could be activated in a timely manner to pretension the seat belt, or the air bag system could be readied for quicker activation, thereby enhancing the application of the safety devices. The controller could also deploy a warning signal to notify the vehicle driver of a predicted collision with an object.
In some vehicle target tracking systems, the host vehicle is generally equipped with a sensor arrangement that acquires range, range rate, and azimuth angle (i.e., direction to target) measurements for each tracked target within a field of view. The sensor arrangement employed in such conventional systems generally requires a relatively complex and expensive sensor arrangement employing multiple sensors that are required to measure the azimuth angle of the object, relative to the host vehicle, in addition to obtaining range and range rate measurements of the object. It is generally desirable to reduce the complexity and cost of systems and components employed on automotive vehicles to provide a cost affordable vehicle to consumers.
It has been proposed to reduce the complexity and cost of a vehicle collision detection system by employing a single radar sensor that provides range and range rate measurements of an object and estimates the miss distance of the object. One such approach is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,615,138, and entitled “COLLISION DETECTION SYSTEM AND METHOD OF ESTIMATING MISS DISTANCE EMPLOYING CURVE FITTING.” The entire disclosure of the aforementioned patent is hereby incorporated herein by reference. Another approach is disclosed in U.S. application Ser. No. 10/158,550, filed on May 30, 2002, and entitled “COLLISION DETECTION SYSTEM AND METHOD OF ESTIMATING MISS DISTANCE.” The entire disclosure of the aforementioned application is hereby incorporated herein by reference. While the aforementioned approaches employing a single radar sensor are well suited to estimate the miss distance of an object, additional information such as the crossing location with respect to the vehicle is generally not available. In some situations, it may be desirable to determine the crossing location of the object with respect to the host vehicle, such as a location on the vehicle front bumper that the object is expected to come into contact with. By knowing the location of the expected collision, countermeasures can be initiated based on the anticipated crossing location.
It is therefore desirable to provide for a vehicle collision detection system that estimates the crossing location of an object. It is further desirable to provide for a reduced complexity and cost affordable vehicle collision detection system that estimates crossing location of an object.